I'm just praying that www.dobedo.com folds soon... Another prime example of venture capital squandered... After an extensive advert campaign, logging onto the site was less than ideal... Loads of excessive graphics, leading up to a painful account creation mechanism. Then when you finally get there, they haven't even sorted out http tunneling or whatever to enter text messages to other people logged on. No way of getting through most corporate firewalls other than port 80; and this feature was "coming real soon now but we won't give a delivery date"... So it was unusable from your work PC, agonisingly slow through dial up, hmmm, nice work. And there did not seem to be any sort of revenue to be generated from the site, either - no banner ads or merchandise... Still, I did fancy that bird on the dobedo posters with the navel ring... Anybody know who she is?
Hmmm, debatable... Three dogs' heads, yes, but here is a description which states there were snake heads protruding from his back, as does here... I can't remember where I read as a child that Cerberus had 50 heads, but anyway, Cerberus had more than 3 heads in total, but three of which were canine.
GPL restricts sharing? Nope, I don't think so. OK, there are a lot of licensing wrangles with the GPL vs BSD vs Artistic licenses, and these can cause headaches. Some of these headaches have been eliminated by the cooperative nature of those involved. But can you imagine a well known book vendor turning around and saying - "Hey, all you web guys - use this 1 click patent stuff I got!", hmmm? This news is not an ideal solution, but it's better than not being able to use this code & patented tech at all...
This is nothing but good news for the whole OSS community. The last few months have seen arrogant corporations sitting on patents and blocking progress and interoperability, all on the lie of "we have to protect our IP interests" OSS has always lead by example, and this is a particularly good message to send to the US Patent Office - if people are voluntarily giving away these "business critical rights" then that's more fuel for the patent reform campaigners. The OSS & other development online communities normally play straight and fair, and gets shafted (like the recent 50 headed guardian dog of Hades debacle). This is a clear message that the OSS is beginning to fight back on corporate territory. I salute this action, and recommend that the OSS begin putting into place procedures that protect algorithms and source from the corporate raiders. Enough playing nice!!!
It depends on the systems you run, and their criticality. Say one office uses Netscape for occasional online bookings of flights, the other uses it for email. The first will need less support than the second. And everything must always be done yesterday in any organisation - depends on how much cash the PHB's are willing to invest in IT
Because one of the main strengths of OSS is to continually evaluate ways of doing things. The "under so many eyes, all bugs are shallow" argument should not just apply to source code. The trick of OSS is to sift through the chaff to find the wheat. This is what is happening now as OSS matures. It is part of the development lifecycle, not that of source code, but of the process and delivery mechanisms that the code resides in. Yes, many have argued that "hey, you're getting it for free, don't bitch if you have to spend a long time sifting through a tarball to get a compilable version", and they have a point. But until it is easy for people to get what they need from an OSS project, it won't catch on into mainstream; that OSS project will remain solely in the hands of hobbyists. Apache is an excellent example of an OSS project that delivers totally professional software. Purists may argue that OSS is only for the dedicated hobbyist, but I disagree with that. Yes, at home I do like to twiddle with an experimental kernel, I do like to jigger with arcane bits and bobs that may teach me something new. But in the workplace, people want things much quicker and reliable than a slapdash release delivers. The more eyes we have on software, even inexperienced eyes, the better. And alienating people that are not 31337 hax0r d00d2 who can decipher a 25Mb tarball in a few minutes is not the way to get those eyes. Do we want OSS only in our bedrooms, or in our boardrooms as well? Because I know which I'd prefer...
Is the problem. From a users point of view, a portable, extendable file format is a total winner. You can take your documents to your clients and feel confident that they will display them as you had formatted them. The problem is, too many vendors hide behind the proprietary formats to cling to their market share. It will cost you too much to change file formats after a time; it _is_ possible to reformat garbled documents into Word Perfect or Star Office, but the vendors don't want you to know that, nor does your PHB want to see you waste time moving stuff across. And vendors play on that. I wonder in the not so distant future - you'll get nailed by the local tax authority for some auditing or something, and the spreadsheet you need to prove your diligence comes up as "Error: file format not valid" for that 6 year old file you forgot to update...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:DSLing a Modem to Heaven
on
WinDSL Coming?
·
· Score: 1
TrollMastuh... You rule. I've only just gotten up off the floor after laughing my arse off... Not good on a London trading floor!!!
I think hte question should have been "Who is the patent system working for?"
The patenting system was basically put together in it's infancy to stop big corporations from stealing ideas from the shed-in-the-bottom-of-the-garden type inventors, and to ensure that they could profit from their ideas. These days, the garden shed inventor is a dying breed, and corporations are filing all the patents. Certainly, in the computing industry, the amount of time it takes for patents to expire is incorrect. I'd say 10 years is enough for any patent to survive for in any technology involved with data communications and computing machines. The problem is, all of the corporations have large wads of cash to throw at legislators. And that is the biggest obstacle to reform.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:If you can't say anything nice...
on
Wormholes? Maybe.
·
· Score: 1
Ummm, Stephen Hawking? True, us Brits haven't put a man in space yet; but we have had a woman in space, though...
So when is it OK to be anonymous? Is it OK to snitch on corporations when they're being bad, but not on people?
Because in/. , people take the AC's with a pinch of salt if they're talking sense, or ignore them totally if they're talking hot grits Portman. This is something else - Pinkerton take the word of the AC as gospel truth... I don't know where these kids are going to find their voice or champion over this - state governments _have_ to be seen to be doing something about the problem. And the DOS attacks on Pinkerton - interesting idea. Seems to me that the nerderati on/. are too used to being at the thin end of the wedge. What proof do we have that bullied kids are going to get nailed by the "golden crowd" kids with this? I'd say it was a perfect conduit for bullied kids to get some attention to their pain...
Why don't you just code 0's and 1's and avoid the dammed compiler all together. Don't think I haven't. I was hand assembling mnemonics to opcodes for 6510 by the time I was 14... And that was 13 years ago...
I am so tired of the testosterone loaded geeks with egos the size of the moon.
Yep. Me too. But there are some that carry an ego, and are worth it. I wouldn't trust anyone near any production system that preferred new () to malloc ()...
Don't forget - information wants to be free... So don't imprison it in rigid datatypes. There is only one datatype, and that is the short integer. Everything else is either a derivative or just plain old fluff. You're either ignorant (which I doubt, given your listed experience) or just deluding yourself.
I'm damn glad you don't work for me; imagine the holy wars there would be at design meetings...
Oh, please. Get a few years' industrial coding under your belt, you whelp, then come back and talk to me. You'll feel different once you've cut your teeth outside your protective academic cocoon. If you ever have to rely on the compiler to sort out your data types then you obviously have little idea what you are doing. Kind of like driving with your eyes shut. Mmmm, just checked your bio... "vegan transhumanist socialist", eh? WTF? Someday you will have dry ears.
Well, it's now obvious. Todays' moderators are smoking crack. I have no truck with the "open source hot grits Portman" trollers, but this post is at least a bit amusing. Trollmastuh got nailed like this yesterday...... And I noticed that the chickenshit moderator marked it as overrated so that the M2 stage wouldn't affect their karma. From the moderator guidelines: Good Comments (...) are clear, hopefully well written, or maybe amusing. These are the gems we're looking for, and they deserve to be promoted. Maybe Rob should add another moderation heading "-1 : Personal Vendetta"...
This is posted at +2; I've got karma to spare and I want more people to see it. Moderators, prove that some of you didn't leave your brain on your pillow this morning.
Oh well, I guess that there's a moderator with either no sense of poetry & verse, or a personal vendetta against Trollmastuh... [Sigh]... Well, _I_ thought it was funny, and certainly a good deal more original than "open source hot grits Portman" posts... Moderators - imagine having a conversation in real life, and apply that to your moderation. By this, I mean if you're in a group discussion (eg/.) and someone is just saying "piss off, piss off" (eg troll) you ignore them (eg moderate them to -1). But when that person contributes an offtopic quip or diversion that has some humour content, and everybody laughs (moderate +1, Funny); pull that rod out of your arse and don't take everything so seriously!
IANALKD (I am not a Linux kernel developer), but I though there was some benefit (task switching / kernel mode overhead?) to having the drivers compiled directly into the kernel? At the very least, surely this is a departure from the "blessed" architecture of the Linux kernel? Any of you 31337 h4xx0r5 (or indeed someone who knows what they're talking about) out there care to enlighten us all on this?
Hmm, I've never succumbed to the regular Katz bashing that goes on here... But when Katz comes out with But men do also connect socially online, (...) through collaborative involvement designing software and writing code,and gaming. The communication appears more indirect, even disguised. Blokes connect fully through the net. We don't feel the need to bare our feelings, talk endlessly about who fancies who, what lipstick to wear that doesn't look tarty or whether or not our arses look big in those jeans. That is why our communication is "indirect" because we have no need of "direct" communication (Katz's definition, not mine). This "post feminist" world has been achieved at the expense of the masculinity of the male. We are forced by media and pop psychologists to search our souls for our "feelings" only to find that we don't really give a toss, then we are forced to feel "incomplete" by the same media and psychological pundits. Wasn't expecting Katz to get this one wrong... Maybe someone replaced his brain with lime jelly (that's jello for you septics) At the end of the day, the men who created the net and the nerds like us who maintain it would have put something like this together (because we do feel the need to understand and grok the technology) long ago if we'd have felt the need. The net is an adaptive beast and is modified in compressed timescales to serve it's creators and maintainers; Katz seems to have forgotten this. Jon Katz : I offer you a wager. You learn to code in C or C++ to industrial standard and I will learn how to write like a journalist, and we will understand one another more; might bring you more in line with the nerderati on/. And before you go "ooh, I don't have time" just remember that I work 60 hour weeks on a London trading floor. Email address is correct and published above. At the very least, you can write an expose on learning to code, and I offer/. the first article I write free of charge. Winner is the first to publish a quality work. How's about it, Jon?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:Day of the Triffids...
on
G3 Solar Storm
·
· Score: 1
Heh!!! I was a mere stripling of a lad when that was showed; think I watched most of it from behind the sofa!!!:) That and any Dr Who episode that had Daleks!!! I thought I was safe upstairs until I saw the one where the Daleks had antigrav boards/shudder/!!!
Perhaps sexbots? Interesting... Anybody remember a story called "Silicon Valley of the Dolls" - I read it in the back of some AI book or other. The storyline was basically that the human race died out because of more & more sophisticated love dolls.
Sexbots - put a speech synth into (WARNING: Slightly dodgy link coming up, just so I'm not lumped with the Score: -100, Set the Work's Firewall Alerts Off So I Lost My Job) this and you're away... With Bluetooth coming up soon, you can have all the processing in your PC, just add some speaker & a mic to this doll & you're halfway there...
Just think if your computer could tell you what it really feels when you sit and play quake on it for hours on end or just swear at it because it just did what you told it? I mean literally giving a machine a choice wheather or not to be a slave is not a bad thing in my book. Heh - I can see it would go like this... You: What's wrong? Why won't you let me play Quake? Computer: Uh! You treat me like a _machine_!!! It's always "run Quake, computer", "download pr0n, computer"... I mean, when do I get a chance to do what _I_ want to do? You: Uhm, well, you _are_ a computer. And where is my collection of JPEGS? Computer: I didn't like them. They were degrading to retain on my hard disk. So I scrapped them. Don't you feel better for it? You: Well, no, actually. They were _my_ files. Can we not play Quake now? Computer: We never talk anymore. Are you seeing another computer? You: Of course not!!! I mean, we have computers at work, but they're just tools! They mean nothing to me! Computer: Oh. And I'll bet they never have to wait 10 months for a measly 64Mb RAM upgrade! And so on. Nope, give me a dumb box any day. 10 GHz processor, yes, intelligent, no.
I'm glad that this company has backed down over this. But whilst their method of trying to ensure a level playing field for all was clumsy, at least they had players interests at heart. The only game I play online right now is Unreal, and when I'm getting my butt kicked every which way I have to wonder... Is that guy that just fragged me really good, or has he got a software advantage? The thing is, I don't know. How would you go about making sure that no one is cheating in an on line game? You can checksum the executable, but that can be forged. And how do you go about making sure that there are no little packet interceptors which correct your aim? /.ers are always willing to disregard "security through obscurity", but how would you design an open method go about this, aiming to get 100% surety that no one is cheating?
Slashdot Mirror
Another prime example of venture capital squandered... After an extensive advert campaign, logging onto the site was less than ideal... Loads of excessive graphics, leading up to a painful account creation mechanism. Then when you finally get there, they haven't even sorted out http tunneling or whatever to enter text messages to other people logged on. No way of getting through most corporate firewalls other than port 80; and this feature was "coming real soon now but we won't give a delivery date"... So it was unusable from your work PC, agonisingly slow through dial up, hmmm, nice work.
And there did not seem to be any sort of revenue to be generated from the site, either - no banner ads or merchandise...
Still, I did fancy that bird on the dobedo posters with the navel ring... Anybody know who she is?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Nope, I don't think so.
OK, there are a lot of licensing wrangles with the GPL vs BSD vs Artistic licenses, and these can cause headaches. Some of these headaches have been eliminated by the cooperative nature of those involved.
But can you imagine a well known book vendor turning around and saying - "Hey, all you web guys - use this 1 click patent stuff I got!", hmmm?
This news is not an ideal solution, but it's better than not being able to use this code & patented tech at all...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The last few months have seen arrogant corporations sitting on patents and blocking progress and interoperability, all on the lie of "we have to protect our IP interests"
OSS has always lead by example, and this is a particularly good message to send to the US Patent Office - if people are voluntarily giving away these "business critical rights" then that's more fuel for the patent reform campaigners.
The OSS & other development online communities normally play straight and fair, and gets shafted (like the recent 50 headed guardian dog of Hades debacle). This is a clear message that the OSS is beginning to fight back on corporate territory.
I salute this action, and recommend that the OSS begin putting into place procedures that protect algorithms and source from the corporate raiders.
Enough playing nice!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The first will need less support than the second.
And everything must always be done yesterday in any organisation - depends on how much cash the PHB's are willing to invest in IT
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The trick of OSS is to sift through the chaff to find the wheat. This is what is happening now as OSS matures. It is part of the development lifecycle, not that of source code, but of the process and delivery mechanisms that the code resides in.
Yes, many have argued that "hey, you're getting it for free, don't bitch if you have to spend a long time sifting through a tarball to get a compilable version", and they have a point. But until it is easy for people to get what they need from an OSS project, it won't catch on into mainstream; that OSS project will remain solely in the hands of hobbyists. Apache is an excellent example of an OSS project that delivers totally professional software.
Purists may argue that OSS is only for the dedicated hobbyist, but I disagree with that. Yes, at home I do like to twiddle with an experimental kernel, I do like to jigger with arcane bits and bobs that may teach me something new. But in the workplace, people want things much quicker and reliable than a slapdash release delivers. The more eyes we have on software, even inexperienced eyes, the better. And alienating people that are not 31337 hax0r d00d2 who can decipher a 25Mb tarball in a few minutes is not the way to get those eyes.
Do we want OSS only in our bedrooms, or in our boardrooms as well? Because I know which I'd prefer...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Bring on the sprouts!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The problem is, too many vendors hide behind the proprietary formats to cling to their market share. It will cost you too much to change file formats after a time; it _is_ possible to reformat garbled documents into Word Perfect or Star Office, but the vendors don't want you to know that, nor does your PHB want to see you waste time moving stuff across. And vendors play on that.
I wonder in the not so distant future - you'll get nailed by the local tax authority for some auditing or something, and the spreadsheet you need to prove your diligence comes up as "Error: file format not valid" for that 6 year old file you forgot to update...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
You rule.
I've only just gotten up off the floor after laughing my arse off... Not good on a London trading floor!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
What was I thinking of? Moderators with a sense of humour?...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The patenting system was basically put together in it's infancy to stop big corporations from stealing ideas from the shed-in-the-bottom-of-the-garden type inventors, and to ensure that they could profit from their ideas.
These days, the garden shed inventor is a dying breed, and corporations are filing all the patents.
Certainly, in the computing industry, the amount of time it takes for patents to expire is incorrect.
I'd say 10 years is enough for any patent to survive for in any technology involved with data communications and computing machines.
The problem is, all of the corporations have large wads of cash to throw at legislators. And that is the biggest obstacle to reform.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
True, us Brits haven't put a man in space yet; but we have had a woman in space, though...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Because in
This is something else - Pinkerton take the word of the AC as gospel truth...
I don't know where these kids are going to find their voice or champion over this - state governments _have_ to be seen to be doing something about the problem. And the DOS attacks on Pinkerton - interesting idea. Seems to me that the nerderati on
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Don't think I haven't. I was hand assembling mnemonics to opcodes for 6510 by the time I was 14... And that was 13 years ago...
I am so tired of the testosterone loaded geeks with egos the size of the moon.
Yep. Me too. But there are some that carry an ego, and are worth it. I wouldn't trust anyone near any production system that preferred new () to malloc ()...
Don't forget - information wants to be free... So don't imprison it in rigid datatypes. There is only one datatype, and that is the short integer. Everything else is either a derivative or just plain old fluff. You're either ignorant (which I doubt, given your listed experience) or just deluding yourself.
I'm damn glad you don't work for me; imagine the holy wars there would be at design meetings...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
If you ever have to rely on the compiler to sort out your data types then you obviously have little idea what you are doing. Kind of like driving with your eyes shut.
Mmmm, just checked your bio... "vegan transhumanist socialist", eh? WTF?
Someday you will have dry ears.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Americans!!! Wake up - I think your justice system is for sale!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I have no truck with the "open source hot grits Portman" trollers, but this post is at least a bit amusing. Trollmastuh got nailed like this yesterday......
And I noticed that the chickenshit moderator marked it as overrated so that the M2 stage wouldn't affect their karma.
From the moderator guidelines:
Good Comments (...) are clear, hopefully well written, or maybe amusing. These are the gems we're looking for, and they deserve to be promoted.
Maybe Rob should add another moderation heading "-1 : Personal Vendetta"...
This is posted at +2; I've got karma to spare and I want more people to see it. Moderators, prove that some of you didn't leave your brain on your pillow this morning.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
[Sigh]...
Well, _I_ thought it was funny, and certainly a good deal more original than "open source hot grits Portman" posts...
Moderators - imagine having a conversation in real life, and apply that to your moderation. By this, I mean if you're in a group discussion (eg
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Any of you 31337 h4xx0r5 (or indeed someone who knows what they're talking about) out there care to enlighten us all on this?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
But men do also connect socially online, (...) through collaborative involvement designing software and writing code,and gaming. The communication appears more indirect, even disguised.
Blokes connect fully through the net. We don't feel the need to bare our feelings, talk endlessly about who fancies who, what lipstick to wear that doesn't look tarty or whether or not our arses look big in those jeans.
That is why our communication is "indirect" because we have no need of "direct" communication (Katz's definition, not mine). This "post feminist" world has been achieved at the expense of the masculinity of the male. We are forced by media and pop psychologists to search our souls for our "feelings" only to find that we don't really give a toss, then we are forced to feel "incomplete" by the same media and psychological pundits.
Wasn't expecting Katz to get this one wrong... Maybe someone replaced his brain with lime jelly (that's jello for you septics)
At the end of the day, the men who created the net and the nerds like us who maintain it would have put something like this together (because we do feel the need to understand and grok the technology) long ago if we'd have felt the need. The net is an adaptive beast and is modified in compressed timescales to serve it's creators and maintainers; Katz seems to have forgotten this.
Jon Katz : I offer you a wager. You learn to code in C or C++ to industrial standard and I will learn how to write like a journalist, and we will understand one another more; might bring you more in line with the nerderati on
How's about it, Jon?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
That and any Dr Who episode that had Daleks!!! I thought I was safe upstairs until I saw the one where the Daleks had antigrav boards
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Interesting... Anybody remember a story called "Silicon Valley of the Dolls" - I read it in the back of some AI book or other. The storyline was basically that the human race died out because of more & more sophisticated love dolls.
Sexbots - put a speech synth into (WARNING: Slightly dodgy link coming up, just so I'm not lumped with the Score: -100, Set the Work's Firewall Alerts Off So I Lost My Job) this and you're away... With Bluetooth coming up soon, you can have all the processing in your PC, just add some speaker & a mic to this doll & you're halfway there...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Heh - I can see it would go like this...
You: What's wrong? Why won't you let me play Quake?
Computer: Uh! You treat me like a _machine_!!! It's always "run Quake, computer", "download pr0n, computer"... I mean, when do I get a chance to do what _I_ want to do?
You: Uhm, well, you _are_ a computer. And where is my collection of JPEGS?
Computer: I didn't like them. They were degrading to retain on my hard disk. So I scrapped them. Don't you feel better for it?
You: Well, no, actually. They were _my_ files. Can we not play Quake now?
Computer: We never talk anymore. Are you seeing another computer?
You: Of course not!!! I mean, we have computers at work, but they're just tools! They mean nothing to me!
Computer: Oh. And I'll bet they never have to wait 10 months for a measly 64Mb RAM upgrade!
And so on. Nope, give me a dumb box any day. 10 GHz processor, yes, intelligent, no.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
/.ers are always willing to disregard "security through obscurity", but how would you design an open method go about this, aiming to get 100% surety that no one is cheating?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.